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EXERCISES 



(fronnttUTf toitj) tfie Snausuration 



REV. CHARLES A. AIKEN, D. D., 



PRESIDENT OF UNION COLLEGE. 



SCHEXECTADT, XEAV YORK, 



TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 1870. 



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JOEL MUNSELL. 
1870. 






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EXERCISES 



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REV. CHARLES A. AIKEN, D. D., 



PRESIDENT OF UNION COLLEGE. 



SCHENECTADY, NEW YORK, 



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TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 1870. 



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JOEL MUSSELL 
1870. 



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ORDER OF EXERCISES. 



DOXOIOGY. 
[praise (E>ob from toh,om all blessings flora.] 



PRAYER 

By Rev. Jacob Van Vechten, D.D., senior member 

of the Board of Trustees. 



ADDRESS 

By Hon. Ira Harris, LID., President of the 

Board of Trustees. 



ADDRESS 

By Rev. Dwight K. Bartlett presenting a Resolution 

of the Alumni Association. 



PRESIDENT'S REPIY. 



MUSIC. 



LNAUGURAI ADDRESS. 



MUSIC. 



BENEDICTION 
By Rev. Dr. Halley. 



INAUGURATION EXERCISES. 



ADDRESS. 

[BY HON. IRA HARRIS, LL.D., PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OP TRUSTEES.] 

IN the name and on behalf of the Trustees of Union 
College I have been authorized to announce that the 
Rev. Charles Augustus Aiken, D.D., was, on the 27th day 
of July last, by the unanimous vote of the Trustees, elected 
President. 

He entered upon his duties, as such president, at the 
commencement of the collegiate year now about to close ;_ 
but his formal and public induction into office was appointed 
to take place on the day next preceding the next annual 
commencement. We are assembled for the purpose of 
completing this service. 

I congratulate the friends of the college upon the auspi- 
cious opening of this new era in its history. It has now 
reached its seventy-fifth anniversary, and we inaugurate, 
to-day, its sixth president. 

Under this new administration, so auspiciously begun, 
the friends of the college confidently look for a greater 
development and expansion of its usefulness, an enlarge- 
ment of its means and appliances for instruction, and an 
increase of its importance and influence as an educational 
institution. 

And now, Dr. Aiken, in the name and on behalf of the 
corporate authorities of this institution, I salute you as 
President of Union College, and commit to you its care 
and supervision. 



6 

In performing this grateful service, permit me to add my 
most cordial congratulations. Your success hitherto, as 
an instructor of youth, furnishes to the authorities and 
patrons of this institution, a guaranty of success hereafter. 

The acknowledged abilities, the excellent attainments, 
and the large experience which you bring to the discharge 
of the duties of your high position, promise the most 
gratifying results. We trust that under your administra- 
tion the college is to become, more and more, a nursery of 
sound learning, and a school for thorough intellectual cul- 
ture. We trust that under your fostering care, this college, 
standing by the old ways — super antiquas vias — and holding 
fast to all that is good of the past, will also show herself alive 
to the scientific progress and the intellectual triumphs 
which distinguish the present day ; and that she will con- 
tribute her full share to those grand efforts that are being- 
made to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge, and 
elevate the human race to a higher level in the scale of 
being. 

It only remains for me, sir, in the name and by the 
authority of the Trustees of Union College to deliver to 
you these documents — the charter and by-laws of the col- 
lege. I present them to you as the symbols of your office, 
and in the name of the Trustees, and by their authority, 
and as their representative, I do formally and publicly 
proclaim you to be the President of Union College. 

As such President I present you to the Faculty of the 
College, and to its Alumni, and to all who honor the occa- 
sion with their presence. 



ADDRESS. 

[by rev. dwight k. bartlett, presenting a resolution of the alumni association.] 

[Resolved, That the Alumni Association welcome President Aiken, 
and, grateful for the encouragement inspired by his acceptance, and 
his administration of the college for the past year, tender him our 
cordial support, and that Rev. Dwight K. Bartlett, of Rochester, 
N. Y., be requested to express the sense of the Association at the 
inaugural exercises of the new president.] 

MR. Bartlett spoke as follows : In the discharge of the 
task assigned, permit me, sir, on the part of the 
Alumni of Union College, most heartily to tender my con- 
gratulations on this auspicious occasion. 

We have assembled this day to witness your investiture, 
formally, with the authority of an office that takes rank 
with the noblest and most honorable within the gift of 
man — an office which allows and demands the largest out- 
lay of intellectual power, the broadest cultivation of the 
faculties, the finest accomplishments of the gentleman, and 
the highest graces of the Christian. 

And we do, sir, most sincerely rejoice that, after the 
sharp and trying ordeal incident to the effort to select 
a person fitted to the exalted station you are called to 
occupy, that effort should have been so gloriously crowned. 
You received your election from the Trustees by a cordial 
unanimity, while the Faculty of the College were no less 
unanimous in their sanction. And besides, sir, you bring 
among us the qualities which we cannot but feel are a 
happy augury for the future. Your reputation for superior 
and profound scholarship has long been established. Your 
popularity and influence with young men in positions you 
have already filled with honor in two of the leading col- 
leges of the land, assure us that a wise discrimination has 



characterized the choice which has been made, and we are 
no less certain that your warm, and tender, and sympathetic 
heart, and your firm love of truth and right, will make you 
the moral power upon the institution committed to your 
charge which we hope and pray you may become. 

We are, sir, moreover, grateful — grateful to the Trustees 
for their assiduity in achieving a task attended with so 
much difficulty, and for their final and perfect agreement; 
and to you, also, for the generous response returned to 
their election. 

The most marked characteristic of the age is its radical- 
ism. More than ever before we are bent on going to the 
bottom of things and determining the rights by which they 
claim to exist. This radicalism penetrates everywhere. 
The church feels it ; the state feels it ; society feels it. The 
argument from authority, prescription and divine right, 
which so conspicuously entered into the- social and political 
writings of the last century, has well nigh ceased to exert 
an influence on the more advanced and fundamental think- 
ing of our time. The demand now is, that all institutions 
which summon the support and allegiance of mankind, 
shall vindicate themselves before the tribunal of utility. 
In obedience to this spirit of utility, John Bright, on the 
floor of the British house of commons, asks, " if the queen, 
by her illness, is unequal to the royal responsibilities, why 
should she be longer intrusted with the royal preroga- 
tives?" The same utility moves Louis Napoleon to seek 
to conciliate the French people into submission to his im- 
perialism, by proving that the Napoleonic dynasty is need- 
ful to the peace and prosperity of France. Bismarck 
sweeps out a whole crowd of minor principalities and 
consolidates them into an empire on the single ground 
that there is no good in them, pronouncing them in his 
own expressive language — " swindles upon government." 



9 

The Pope finds himself helpless in his appeal to the char- 
tered rights of Charlemagne and the grants of the Countess 
Matilda to maintain the temporal power. The challenge 
of the 19th century is to show what good is subserved by 
the continuance of the temporal power as an impediment 
to an united Italy. 

This radicalism is abroad in our own country. And in 
no department of inquiry is it more active and searching 
than in respect to education. Now, as never before, in- 
vestigation is being directed to the ends of education and 
the methods by which it should be prosecuted. 

It would be unbecoming, sir, either to distress your 
patience or to trespass upon the limits allowed me, by 
entering upon an extended consideration of this subject. 
I may, however, be pardoned for saying that we are agreed 
in regarding as the purpose of education, not the produc- 
tion of an intellectual aristocracy, of a class of men who 
shall find satisfaction in the isolated play of their own 
faculties. We have come to recognize as the final end of 
all literary and scientific culture the evolution from men, 
■of their highest and most effective power ; that kind of 
power which tells most palpably on the world's progress 
in the arts of living and in a Christian civilization. The 
young men who leave our colleges most amply supplied 
with the breadth of mind and force of moral impulse, to 
feel this to be their mission, answer most perfectly to the 
radical demands of the age. 

It is no exaggeration, sir, to assert that this idea has 
been paramount in the polity of Union College, during a 
long and prosperous career, to give the students privileged 
with her advantages, the furniture for true and abiding 
effectiveness on the world ; and her success has been how 
generously justified, we well know, by the long list of her 
graduates who have attained eminence in every profession, 
2 



10 

and not a few of whom are identified with some of the 
most important events of our national history. 

Feeling, sir, that it is with this end in view our sons and 
brothers and friends will seek, in the after time, the bene- 
fits of this institution, we intrust its interests to your keep- 
ing. And we are sure that we place them in no unworthy 
hands, but in hands faithful and tried. "We pledge to you 
our firm support. We will uphold your arms in all ways 
we can. Your name shall ever be spoken with esteem and 
affection. If the hour of trial shall come, we will prove 
your steadfast Mends. 

In conclusion, sir, we cannot dismiss this occasion with- 
out commending you to that Higher Power, without whose 
strength and enlightenment no permanent success is possi- 
ble. Your own experience must furnish sufficient evidence 
that this Power is indispensable to every good and noble 
endeavor. The arduous responsibilities which hereafter 
will be upon you, and the high expectations we cherish, 
you can hope to fulfill only as the help of God is freely 
given. We do, sir, most earnestly pray that that help may 
ever be yours, enabling you to achieve a career honorable 
to yourself, which shall be freighted with blessing to the 
world and approved of heaven ; and that at last, when you 
shall have done with the dust and sweat and toil and war- 
fare of this earthly life, you and we shall meet in the land 
beyond the flood, where the clash and encounter of war 
are unknown, where music keeps time not to the tread of 
embattled hosts, but to that of the myriads of the redeemed, 
regenerated and glorified of the sons of men ; and where 
peans are sung not to the conqueror over the marshaled 
battalions of earth, but to Him who, having conquered sin 
and death, sits in unshadowed light on the eternal throne. 



11 



THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY. 

YOU have turned my thoughts back, Mr. President, to 
a pleasant evening in June, a little more than a year 
ago, when my quiet, happy and unsuspecting home in a 
neighboring state was ruthlessly invaded, with crafty de- 
signs admirably disguised ; and to later days when indirect 
inquiries, and then direct overtures and in due time formal 
official communications were made to me, whose public 
consummation is reached in the ceremonies of this hour. 

I do not understand, nor is it your meaning, that my 
acceptance at your hands of these symbols of authority 
and trust now first confers upon me the right to discharge 
the duties of my office. For nearly a year I have carried 
the weight of its responsibilities and felt the pressure of its 
anxieties, and have endeavored to fulfill such of its duties as 
fell within the bounds of the year. And yet, as you have 
deemed it fitting and probably useful to connect with this 
anniversary of the institution a certain ratification or re- 
announcement of your action, so on my part I cheerfully 
repeat in this presence my acceptance of the trust. 

Will you permit me to say here and now that the year's 
experience has also brought to me not a little that tends to 
remove the misgivings and anxieties with which I first 
signified to you my acceptance of this office. 

Your own Board has received me with the greatest con- 
sideration and kindness, a like spirit has been from the 
first most characteristic of my associates in the Faculty. 
An excellent disposition has been manifested by the stu- 
dents, and the Alumni have received me with the most 
marked and gratifying cordiality, not only here to-day, but 
at other times and places as I have met them. 



12 

My only living predecessor in this office, an honored son 
of Union, whose diploma was dated fifty years ago — a man 
whose name and fame have reached more continents than 
one, and whose presence and participation in to-day's 
exercises we desired and earnestly sought, has given me 
assurance of his deep interest both in the prosperity of the 
college and in my own success here. And those who most 
nearly represent his revered predecessor — the loved and 
honored father of nearly all of Union's thousands of sons — 
whose name like a watchword rallies all the families of 
the clan from Maine to California, who created Union's 
fame and influence, they too have with very great kind- 
ness given me their welcome, and made me feel at home 
with them. 

But I realize to-day, more than ever before, the amount 
of work to be done if the college is to reach and hold the 
position and influence which we desire, and done not by 
me; alone but by you of the board, and by us who teach, 
and by these assembled Alumni, and by all whom we can 
enlist in the good cause, not by the best of purposes, nor 
by annually repeated resolutions, but through the power 
of animating and stimulating example and unwearied toil. 
And shall not this day and this hour and this place see 
pledge exchanged for pledge, and hand joined with hand 
in a new consecration to the good cause ? 



13 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 

Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, 

Alumni and Students of the College, 

LADIES and Gentlemen : Regard for you as well as for 
myself amidst the thronging duties of these crowded 
days, bids me address myself at once to the theme which has 
commended itself as appropriate to the day and the occa- 
sion. Dispensing with the zigzags, trenches and parallels 
of rhetorical engineering, which might be needful if we 
were attacking an enemy's stronghold, I would move as 
on friendly ground. So far as my subject needs the com- 
mendation of a preliminary announcement, let it be this : 
Our Union the union of the old and the new in educa- 
tion; THE UNION OF EXPERIMENT AND EXPERIENCE. The 

system of education which we would in theory defend, 
and in practice carry out to the largest results attainable 
with the means at our disposal, recognizes and would duly 
honor both the old and the new, that which has borne the 
test of long and varied experience, and that which seems 
required by the real and reasonable demands of our new 
and changed conditions. "We would make full account of 
both these elements, alike in the substance of our teaching, 
in its aims and in its methods. This has been the Union 
of the past ; let it be the Union of the future. 

From whatever point within historical limits we ap- 
proach the subject of education, we encounter a fixed, 
established, traditional element, that demands recognition 
and consideration. There is a theory or doctrine in regard 
to the ends to be secured, and the proper means of secur- 
ing those ends. Various influences may have contributed 



14 

to give this traditional system its place and its prestige. 
The thousand subtle workings that go to make up usage, 
the more palpable forces that mould legal enactments, 
the philosophical system wrought out or received by the 
ruling mind or minds that in the plastic period fashion 
society and civilization, the pressure of some great exigency 
that has consolidated what was before fragmentary and 
crude, or compelled the substitution for that which would 
have been abstractly preferred of that which must per- 
force be done, those intangible, inexplicable sentiments, 
of local or national range, which so often elude measure- 
ment and definition, even while changing the whole face 
and form of human systems and institutions, all these 
elements and more have been at work to make the tradi- 
tional what it is. The results of all this working we must 
accept, whether we succeed or fail in our endeavor to 
interpret them in their origin. The men of any race or 
age or clime or locality with which we may choose to 
begin our inquiry are found to have their view of the 
ends to be sought in culture, the kind of culture which it 
is best to seek, and the methods by which it is desirable 
or practicable to strive for the desired good. The Spartan 
view of the objects for which men exist and for which 
they should be trained would have been scouted at Athens, 
and the ideal Athenian was an abomination at Sparta, as 
the actual Athenian was a rival and antagonist for cen- 
turies in the great struggle for ascendancy in Greece. To 
take a less classical example, the Mohawk who occupied 
this beautiful valley three centuries ago, the honest Dutch- 
man who dispossessed him, and the composite American 
of the nineteenth century have their educational theories 
no less readily defined and distinguished, each character- 
istic of the race and the period, each embodying the result 
of ages of experience and development, each entitled to 



15 

the deference which is due to sturdy and immutable facts 
when found in the path of honest inquiry. 

In some way then this traditional element has gained its 
advantage, and has at least this presumption in its favor, 
that it is by so many living links connected with the past, 
and is in present possession of the ground. Whether de- 
liberately fashioned, or the product of a growth, slow and 
silent as that of a plant of many centuries, it has reached 
forms and proportions not easily changed. 

But let us approach the subject from another side, and 
ask, not, what has education been ; or, what are its actu- 
ally existent forms, but what is the true culture, what 
should education be; thinkers, the Herbert Spencers of 
successive generations, have always exercised themselves 
on this question, either in their endeavor to secure round- 
ness and completeness to their abstract system, or in their 
philanthropic desire to remedy the imperfections and the 
positive ills of society. They may or may not derive their 
original impulse or their persistent energy from dissatis- 
faction with the actually existing methods or results. 
According to their idea education should proceed on cer- 
tain assumptions in regard to individual human nature, or 
our common humanity, or the true functions of society. 
If the assumptions do not accord with the facts, it is most 
unfortunate for the facts. The educational theory only 
needs to be pushed with the more vigor as having a more 
arduous work before it. The theorizer is a little less likely 
to live to witness the realization of his glowing and bene- 
volent desire. 

There is still another, a third way, of approaching these 
educational problems, that of the men who are par excel- 
lence " practical," nothing if not " practical." It matters 
nothing to them how their ancestors, one generation or 
ten generations removed, may have reasoned or practiced. 



16 

It matters nothing to them how philosophers of whatever 
learning or renown may have announced that things onght 
to he. Here is an existing condition of things ; certain 
work to he done with all energy and dispatch; certain 
living problems pressing for solution according to rule or 
contrary to all rule ; certain men possessed of certain 
powers to deal with these urgent interests. If there be 
some existing mode of training and using man's working 
powers, they are willing to try it first, not because of any 
deference for it or its pedigree, but because as an existing 
mode it is most available. But the test is that of imme- 
diate and palpable utility. What the system may have 
been good for under other circumstances establishes only 
a momentary presumption in its favor, and its very suc- 
cess in other fields may seal its rejection here and now, 
because the results now demanded are so totally diverse. 
Your " practical " man is willing to tarry a moment over 
the traditional system to learn what it has anywhere 
effected, under what circumstances, and at what rate of 
development its best results have been reached, what its 
relations are to the present inner tendencies or outer con- 
ditions of society about him. But on principle, and that 
a principle of which he makes no secret, he eschews gene- 
alogical tables, historical museums and sentimentality. 
How quick and how large returns may be expected in the 
precise line of present exigencies ? This is his test. Now 
the old in education is always subjected to the criticism 
and attack both of the speculative and of the practical. 
How shall the philosopher prove his right to be, if all im- 
portant truths were known before he appeared. It must 
be that the world has remained in dreary, suffering ignor- 
ance of some things most important for it to know, or has 
had a dim and unjust comprehension of things of whose 
existence it had become aware. It must be that things 



17 

can be better clone, as well as better known. Ignorance 
and half knowledge cannot furnish individuals or society 
with the best theories of life, or the best practical systems 
in the direction of any living interest. And all these 
traditional modes of training men are from and of the 
dark and twilight ages. ISTow that philosophy has come 
let men walk in the light (or take the consequences.) 
Or your practical man discovers (as he was very sure 
would be the case) that if human beings are very much 
what human beings were several generations ago, their 
circumstances have immensely changed, and that it is 
sheer absurdity to suppose that any system of training 
connected by any filaments however delicate, with other 
continents and other generations, is entitled to the least 
deference as a working system for our to-day. There may 
be places where the world does not move, there may be 
lands where the nineteenth is but the prolongation of the 
sixteenth century, there may be social conditions in which 
what is once good is good forever. But in the Western 
Continent, in the latter third of the nineteenth century, in 
the great republic of all the ages let no man offer for 
adoption the intellectual wardrobes, utensils or fashions 
of the musty past. 

Our age is most peculiar. Our people is most extra- 
ordinary. "Where is there a parallel to our past ? Where 
can there be detected the feeblest suggestion of a glory 
like that of our future ? And shall we be educated like 
other men ? He insults us who hints that we belong after 
all to the one human race, that we occupy a portion of 
the one globe known as earth, and that myriads of links 
connect us with the other continents and their civilizations, 
and that our marvellous peculiarities are as nothing com- 
pared with the numberless characteristics which we share 
with other men. The Declaration of Independence must 
3 



18 

have cut us off from all connection with the by-gone ages. 
What was there before 1776 except the Christian era, and 
Christopher Columbus, and Plymouth Rock, and a settle- 
ment on Manhattan Island, with one or two near the 
junction of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers ? To what 
but such sentiments and reasonings as these can we trace 
it, that Rousseau's sweeping maxim should have found 
practical assent here as in no other land or age? " Take 
the road directly opposite to that which is in use, and you 
will almost always do right." We are such a people, and 
our land is such a land, and our times are such times, that 
we need a host of nondescript universities and colleges 
and institutes unlike anything before or elsewhere seen, 
or likely to appear except od our prolific soil. The marvel 
is that an aversion so intense to the organizations and 
systems elsewhere described by these names, radiant with 
the glories of a splendid past, should not have stimulated 
to the invention of original names. Why should we have 
"Universities" without one university element, and " Col- 
leges" that in their scope and breadth and cultivating 
power fall below our best academies; and other educa- 
tional institutions that seem to have exhausted themselves 
in the production of high sounding names? 

Union College should represent, it has represented more 
than a union of different local interests, more than a union 
of different denominational interests, more than a union 
of different lines of culture. It has aimed, may it to the 
end aim, and more and more prosper in its aim, to unite 
profound respect for the traditional in education with a 
hearty welcome for whatever is really required by the 
progressive and changing conditions of society. 

We are only a college, one college. We are not a 
university in either of the two senses, as having under 
one organization the usual professional schools as well as 



19 

academic and scientific departments, or as founded and 
organized with the intent that "any person may find 
instruction in any study." We are well content with a 
much more restricted sphere, and here we build on the old 
foundations. But we will not limit ourselves to the archi- 
tectural aims, styles or appliances of bygone centuries, 
nor will we pledge ourselves to furnish our educational 
structure with no other furniture or decorations than were 
then in vogue. Strange dialects may one after another 
make themselves heard within our walls, and sciences 
find exposition and illustration that would to our fathers 
have seemed as magic arts. We are not impatient to try 
on those who gather here all the educational nostrums 
that are proffered to a restless age, being content with 
that which bears the attestation of a ripe and long experi- 
ence, or, necessarily lacking this, carries every other 
endorsement than that of experience. 

The object of all self-culture should be that we heartily and 
entirely submit ourselves to the laws of our life, not that 
knowing them we may master them, or rule by them, but 
that by complete conformity to them we may reach the 
dignities and rewards which are ordained for the dutiful 
and faithful. To this end we long and strive for truth ; 
to this end we aspire to the most absolute mastery over 
all our powers and faculties in their largest attainable 
development ; to this end in the exercise of this mastery 
we would put knowledge and training always and every- 
where to their decreed uses, that we may meet our Lord's 
reasonable requirement, may enjoy his approval, and may 
receive the tokens of it in growth and power and peace 
and happiness without alloy in his kingdom forever. 

And within the sphere of secular education we recog- 
nize these as the three great aims of a liberal training, to 
develop a reverence for truth and an ardent love for know- 



20 

ledge, with a high estimate of their value ; to cultivate 
the power of acquiring, using, and expressing knowledge ; 
and to a limited extent to impart knowledge itself. That 
was a weighty charge brought two or three years since by 
that Rt. Hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer against the edu- 
cational systems of England : " Our education does not 
communicate to us knowledge, it does not communicate 
to us the means of obtaining knowledge, it does not com- 
municate to us the means of communicating knowledge." 
The charge sustained would justly doom the system. We 
insist not simply on the points which he pressed but on 
others of which he made less account. Deeper than the 
possession of knowledge, deeper than expertness in its 
acquisition and communication, there must be the pure, 
strong, reverential love for truth, which culture may not 
create, but must unfold and guide. It is surely needless 
as well as hopeless to borrow the precision of an analytical 
chemist in determining the exact percentage of each of 
these three elements in any given measure of educational 
effort or success. This, however, cannot be too strougly 
pressed, that the element which at first makes the most 
display, that of positive knowledge imparted and secured, 
has the least abiding value. Let love of truth be awakened ; 
let a thirst for knowledge be ensured; let the powers, by 
whose vigorous and well directed use this love is to be 
gratified and this thirst satisfied, be brought under com- 
mand; let their effectiveness be increased by well distri- 
buted and judicious culture; let enough of present and 
positive acquisition be secured to' encourage and measura- 
bly reward the student, and it will not much disturb us if 
superficial and impatient critics should complain that we 
have no great store of learning to show for the first years 
of pupilage. Later years, after the voice and hand of the 
master have been withdrawn, when the pupil has been 



21 

thrown upon Ms own principles and his own resources, 
will be his harvest time in visible and ponderable sheaves 
of knowledge. The mind's storehouse will not remain 
empty, while high and pure tastes are slowly developing, 
aud wayward impulses and untrained powers are by steady 
and protracted incitement and restraint wrought into 
healthful vigor and effectiveness. These first undisci- 
plined, unsymmetrical workings of the mind, so often 
hindering and counteracting each other, may still be made 
productive of something tangible. But for this very 
reason early studies should be selected by the teacher, not 
by the student, and rigorously prescribed. 

Some of our institutions of learning have found, others 
have imagined, themselves able to leave to the student the 
election of a portion of his studies. We congratulate 
those whose pupils have reached such maturity of judg- 
ment, knowledge and solid attainment as to be entrusted 
with this responsible choice. But to be held responsible 
for the result of courses of study moulded to any extent 
by the inexperience, the caprice, the indolence, the castle- 
building imagination that are most impatient to be allowed 
their own choice, we can never consent. When we are 
able to secure at the start a far riper preparation, and with 
this advantage are able to make our first years more richly 
and rapidly productive, then it will be soon enough for us 
to begin to consider the question to what extent we may 
allow alternative courses of study, and indulge ourselves 
with the pleasure of teaching a portion of the time those 
whose unsolicited choice brings them to their work. 

Within the term appropriate for prescribed study, 
(which with us must, at least for the present, be the whole 
college period) we would in our selections and combina- 
tions honor both the old and the new, the studies that 
have for centuries approved themselves as of priceless value 



22 



to scholars of many lands, and those which have opened 
so richly within the memory of living men. At one of the 
recent gatherings of our Alumui in the great central valley 
of the continent, the point was very effectively made, 
that long before the scientific schools of the east had 
received their distinct working organization, the profound 
sagacity of him whom Union's sons delight to honor had 
rightly interpreted the drift of things and the wants of 
the future, and had provided a scientific course parallel to 
and of equal dignity with the classical. And it is a grate- 
ful testimony that comes to us from such states at the east 
as the Keystone and at the west as Missouri, that there, 
where scientific pretensions are subjected to the sternest 
tests, no class of aspirants for the practical honors and 
rewards of their profession are as a body esteemed above 
the graduates of our own Engineering department. 

The real dignity and worth of our scientific course let 
us only enhance ! If it has been too much favored, in. 
that too short a period of preparation, has gained admis- 
sion to all its opportunities, let us exact, if we can find 
the way to do it, as much real discipline as would admit 
to the classical course when its portals are guarded with 
most jealous care. And let the disciplinary value of its 
first year, which is its latest addition and has had a some- 
what experimental form, fall not a whit behind that of a 
sister course, when this shall be carried up to its highest 
effectiveness. If the final honors are to be the same, let 
them represent, as nearly as may be, the same work and 
attainment. So would we honor the new in educational 
theory and practice. 

But not for this would we cast off the old, the original 
course of this and all the earlier colleges. To those who 
choose it we offer an equal opportunity and an equal palm 
in the so called scientific course. But for those who make 



23 

no choice for themselves we provide the old and honored 
course which in its earlier stages spends its strength mainly 
on the nohle classic tongues and literatures, with us an 
undivided pair, whose recovered use in public and private 
culture contributed so much to change the gloom and 
stiffness of the middle ages into the fresh, strong life of 
to-day. Let those that will declare themselves sick of 
Greece and Rome, and all dead nations, and all dead 
languages. "We do not so understand human nature, or 
human history, or the laws of mental power and progress, 
or the conditions of the most effective participation in the 
great work that you and I are to-day called to do in our 
world. 

A recent report of the English "commissioners on 
middle schools " takes this position, one which in our 
judgment can he held against all assault. " The ' human ' 
subjects of instruction, of which the study of language is 
the beginning, appear to have a distinctly greater educa- 
tional power than the material. Nothing appears to 
develop and discipline the whole man so much as the 
study which assists the learner to understand the thoughts, 
to enter into the feelings, or appreciate the moral judg- 
ments of others." And Lord Bulwer Lytton who is not 
more a brilliant writer than a shrewd observer and an ac- 
complished man of the world, maintains in opposition to a 
very common prejudice, that "the classic authors teach us 
less how to handle words than how to view things." We 
by no means claim that the classic tongues and their noble 
literatures have always been so handled as to yield these 
varied and rich returns. Their power to do so we cannot 
question. And in some lines of educating influence in 
which they have often been declared most deficient, we 
find elements and evidences of their great value. Do they 
not develop the habit and power of exact observation, and 



24 

the ability to put into available forms the results of nice 
observation ? Let eye and ear and touch, each in its place 
and according to its opportunity be trained to distinguish 
between one sparrow and his next of kin, one crystal and 
that which sparkles next it in the coronet on monarch's 
or on beauty's brow, one nutritious root or leaf and its 
death-laden counterfeit, one star and that which differeth 
in glory? But shall not the same mind be trained, and 
trained through the most perfect tongues and literatures 
of men, to discriminate between a truth and an error, a 
whole truth and a half truth, a truth clear, bright and 
winning in the beauty and fitness of its drapery, and a 
truth which you must first disrobe of its uncouth, inapt, 
repulsive costume before you can know it for a whole idea 
of any kind ? In using or reading our own tongue our 
object and our instrument are too much in and of and 
like ourselves to be best observed and appreciated. We 
must get out of ourselves into our fellow men, into their 
habits of thought, their modes of expression, their style 
of conceiving and representing things, and come back 
better knowing our own thought and how to present it. 
Two great races by some amazing accident or because of 
some wondrous aptitude, have largely moulded for twenty- 
five centuries the world's institutions and civilization. 
The speech of such men could not be altogether unlike 
and unworthy of themselves. Their recorded thoughts 
cannot be beneath contempt. A knowledge of their 
thoughts and their grand career gained not through num- 
berless transfusions and dilutions, but fresh and strong 
from the pens of their own great thinkers and writers, 
cannot be an idle acquisition or a worthies possession. 
Pitt and Fox and Burke and Peel and Gladstone and 
Derby, were not enervated and unfitted for their great 
work on England's political and social destiny by the dead- 



25 

ness of the tongues in the study and command of which 
they gained their earliest honors, and through recurrence 
to which they refreshed the hours wearied hy pressure of 
public care. 

"But there are so many things to learn and so many 
things to do ! Yes ; and for that very reason let the pre- 
paration, and the instruments and processes of preparation 
be the best possible. Let methods of classic teaching be 
improved and perfected ; let time be economized and labor 
be concentrated, and these studies be complemented by 
sciences exact and applied and speculative, by modern lan- 
guages and literatures, by natural history in some of its 
great departments, and whatever else can, without a dizzy- 
ing and enfeebling division and distraction of thought and 
labor, be brought within our bounds of time. 

Says Sir James Stephen, " In order to know anything, 
one must resolve to remain ignorant of many things." 
From principle, therefore, as well as from necessity we 
exclude for the present many things of which it is well 
that we should at sometime have a knowledge. The few 
things that we can with some moderate degree of thorough- 
ness open to knoAvledge and use will make later acquisition 
easy, intelligent and delightful. And though not a few 
of the things learned in school days be forgotten, that is 
no real loss, if disappearing from memory they have 
entered with a vigorous life into our mental habits and 
capabilities, so that every present effort grasps larger 
results. 

There is little danger in these days that we shall be too 
seldom or too indifferently reminded of the theoretical 
and practical importance of the sciences. Let true science, 
let the chief sciences, in their exactness and their inexact- 
ness, their certainties, their probabilities and their mere 
hypotheses never fail of a welcome here ! Let the greeting 
4 



26 

which they have ever received he proved sincere hy the 
multiplication of their appliances and facilities ! Let the 
knowledge we impart he more substantial, more vivid, 
more disciplinary, more practically available as science 
moves onward, and we are enabled by the liberal encourage- 
ment of friends to put its pretensions to the proof and 
give them rich and varied illustration ! 

But we cannot be content to know " the house we live 
in," the earth we inhabit, the material universe of and in 
which we are a little part. The more we are delighted 
and amazed by the discoveries of astronomy the more 
eagerly do we ask " what of the astronomer ? " He may 
not throw star dust in our eyes to blind us as we attempt 
to study him, a man made in the image of God, as no star 
however glorious ever was. "We delight (some of us) in 
the marvellous precision and conclusiveness of mathema- 
tical processes and reasonings. But all the more are we 
impelled to ask " what of the mathematician ? " He shall 
not deny our right to take a profound interest in him, the 
man himself, though we may not be able to start with a 
table of axioms, or express each step of the process in an 
equation or a formula. We are attracted by the fierce 
debate of the aqueous and the igneous geologists, and 
from their exhibition of wisdom in regard to the way in 
which worlds are made, hope to gain not the least substan- 
tial and permanent of our results in the insight which we 
acquire into the regularities and eccentricities of scientific 
speculation. "We are startled and for a moment bewildered 
by the introduction into science of " correlation of forces " 
and " protoplasm." "We follow on a little way behind the 
chief explorers, and as we go, muse upon mind, its nature, 
its range and reach, its laws, its vagaries, its health and 
disease, its destiny. If we are to confess ourselves kindred 
to or descended from the apes, and, more remotely, other 



27 

lower orders of being, reaching back, as we follow the 
reversed series, through centuries or myriads of genera- 
tions, we demand the right to study the things in which 
we differ from our kin as well as the things in which we 
agree with them. "We must know what we may of the 
new elements that have strangely come in during the pro- 
gress of this development — thought, freedom, conscience. 
"We must have knowledge (where knowledge is attainable) 
or opinions, where only opinions are legitimate, concerning 
man, the lord of the terrestrial creation, as well as with 
reference to the various parts of his wide domain. "We 
will investigate, whether we reach assured knowledge or 
not, with respect to that part of man's being -with which 
his lordship is connected, as well as that part through 
which he claims affinity to his own subject realm. 

"With all their inexactness, mental and moral and political 
science, and rhetoric and history, excite our rational curi- 
osity, appeal tr our deepest sensibilities, commend them- 
selves as eminently worthy our most patient and profound 
thought, and demand a generous place in our studies and 
our instructions. Aiming to blend in just proportion the 
old and the new, we must continue to give to some of 
these studies the recognition heretofore given, and for 
others secure if possible a worthier place. 

But man is not all mind, neither is the mind the whole 
man. Let his intelligence have received a culture marvel- 
lous in its extent and perfection. Let him be an encyclo- 
paedia of hoarded wisdom. He is, if this be all, only a 
fraction of a man, furnished for a part of man's work in 
the world. His body and its conditions, his emotional 
and moral powers with their health and efficiency, may 
not be left to nature, or to the random impulses, influences 
and experiences of each individual person and life, or his 
career will be one long, dreary disappointment and failure. 



28 

It is quoted as one of the utterances of Montaigne's deep 
practical sense : " We have not to train up a soul, nor 
yet a body; but a man, and we cannot divide him." 

With us the matter of physical culture should be mainly 
subordinate and incidental. And yet it is a present living 
question whether it should be no more than this. By the 
instruction and counsel we give, by the habits and exercises 
we tolerate, encourage or enjoin, we do much in settling 
the question how much work, and what kind of work our 
young men shall do in the world. It is a serious question 
whether it be not expedient for us or ever incumbent upon 
us to make far ampler provision for a systematic physical 
culture. 

Having provided for the training and storing of the 
intellect, having settled affirmatively or negatively the 
question of a formal gymnastic culture, have we reached 
the limits of a legitimate secular education? There are 
those who will challenge our right to train in morals and 
religion, to whom we shall "give place by subjection, no 
not for an hour." According to our conception of our 
solemn trust as true men and faithful educators (though 
Christian obligation be left out of the account) we must 
teach and vindicate the great principles of morality. 
Otherwise our work is worse than an unsymmetrical, 
imperfect work. The elements of fatal weakness and 
decay are left to work unheeded and unchecked to thwart 
our labor upon mind and body. 

How the right kind and. measure of moral culture can 
be attained without greater definiteness and regularity of 
religious teaching than seems allowed by the constitution 
of the college is one of our most perplexing problems. 
Here the denominational institutions have a three-fold 
advantage over us, in the facility afforded to their officers 
in solving this problem of religious instruction and influ- 



29 

ence, in the confidence elicited from the public toward 
that which is well defined and positive, and in the more 
definite and homogeneous constituency to which they may 
look for moral and material support. Can we do our 
whole duty in educating the full manhood of those entrusted 
to our charge, and maintain ourselves over against the 
greater unity and compactness of the denominational 
colleges ? 

"Learning" it has been said, "is a world and not a 
chaos." There is therefore a mutual relation and inter- 
dependence of parts, such as greatly lightens the student's 
toil, and multiplies and amplifies his results. A few things 
thoroughly mastered give him command over many things. 

So in education there should be something of the 
cosmical order and completeness. Whatever elements it 
may include, whatever its solution of some delicate pro- 
blems, there should breathe through and over the whole 
a spirit that shall impart harmony and life not only to the 
system but to its results. 

It is not enough that the teaching be exact, broad and 
stimulating. - It is not enough that the mode of its com- 
munication be considerate and judicious, yet manly and 
forcible. In all the surroundings there should be a con- 
stant and helpful educating influence. Before the mouth 
of teacher or pupil is open for discourse, before the eye 
has been summoned to any diagram, formula or experi- 
ment, the place itself should have begun to teach. ISTot 
simply the general lessons of neatness, and order and 
refined taste, and pure intellectual gratification should be 
deeply though silently inculcated, but by a thousand easily 
acquired accessories; the great men, the great objects, the 
great principles, the great achievements of the chief 
departments of instruction might by a visible presenta- 
tion be enlarging knowledge, purifying taste, impressing 



30 

memory, and turning formalism and death into reality 
and power. The history of men and of their civilizations, 
the marvels of nature and of art might through the eye 
he aiding every spoken word so that the soul should never 
lose the powerful and healthful impulse then and there 
received. 

And while these inspirations, encouragements and 
incitements are constantly and everywhere present, most 
of the departments are powerless and dead without an 
illustrative apparatus to he employed from time to time 
in giving vividness and permanence to what would other- 
wise he vague and ineffectual teaching. The poverty 
which compels an institution to forego these helps is a 
deplorable misfortune ; the indifference or torpidity which 
consents to the needless loss of this great reservoir of 
teaching power is far worse than a misfortune. 

Another principle it is most disastrous to disregard or 
forget; that teachers and students must he students 
together, instructors who are powerful and effective 
teachers being the most enthusiastic and successful of 
students. Let no dead accumulations of past research he 
brought to the daily service of the recitation or lecture 
room by him who would deal vitally witli the living and 
waiting minds about him. Freshened impressions of 
familiar truth, new views of the possible and actual appli- 
cations of well known facts, the satisfaction which attends 
the discovered solution of perplexing problems, and the 
eager inquisitiveuess that is constantly descrying new 
problems to be solved, these mental states and such as 
these constantly existing and exhibited in the teacher will 
awaken dull pupils and stimulate those tbat are awake to 
such diligence and acquisitiveness as will put the teacher 
to his mettle if he would hold his proper leadership in his 
room. And if this is anywhere to be, there must be an 



31 

adequate, fresh and growing library accessible to teachers 
and students, itself fitly accommodated, and well accommo- 
dating those who would find either knowledge or refresh- 
ment from its rich stores, obtaining now the ready answer 
to some transient question, and again the material for 
busy days and months of toil in some field of letters or 
of science. Let it invite, welcome and reward the thought- 
ful and inquisitive; and let the alcove of the Alumni 
treasure up the grateful return sent back by those who 
owe it some of their happiest and most profitable hours. 

The Union of the old and the new! 

The old Union ! Its magnificent location ; its glorious 
landscape ; its priceless memories of the departed, and 
the inexhaustible power that is hoarded for iis in their 
works which do follow them ; its treasures in the reputa- 
tion and influence of living sons; its wise and happy 
blending of the old with the new, the traditional with the 
progressive in its material and methods of instruction and 
discipline ; its genial, friendly oversight over the personal 
interest and welfare of its " coming Alumni." 

And built on this foundation the new Union ! Some 
new buildings whose hope deferred maketh the heart sick ; 
some new recitation and lecture rooms more favorable to 
vitality and aspiration and taste and mental acquisitive- 
ness; some new conveniences and comforts about our 
students' lodging rooms and their appurtenances ; new 
apparatus for the various departments of physical science ; 
new accommodations for our present incommoded collec- 
tions in natural history and that which a true theory and 
practice of development would year by year add to them ; 
a new library building, a fitting home for a growing store 
of literary treasures, made an eager resort for many whom 
its' fresh and living facilities shall reclaim from idleness 
and from dissipated activities, and shall nourish to an 



32 



intelligent and well furnished manhood ; new impulses by 
all this imparted to teachers, new enjoyment and progress 
and manly growth ensured to students ; new confidence 
and respect gained through the state and the land ; new 
power exerted on this and all the coming generations ! 

Say, fathers and brethren, shall this be a mere day 
dream of the imagination? How wide a gulf shall sepa- 
rate us from the beginning of its realization ? 

If the God of the Fathers will be our God, the vision 
shall not linger in the form of a vision many days. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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